what?

lt. gen. carl strock was just asked in an interview being televised on c-span why the levees were only built to withstand a category 2-3 storm when it was known that there was a tremendous likelihood of a more intense storm hitting new orleans, and his response was, "why do people live in san francisco? why do people live in seattle, when we know that a devastating earthquake is going to hit those cities? and the answer is, because that's where they choose to live."

how in the world is there a correlation between those two things? if you're going to take defensive measures against natural disasters, why would you deliberately choose to take ineffective measures when you had the option not to? why bother doing anything at all? that's the question being asked, and he responded with a flippant dismissal. i'm happy to see that the other people in the room aren't letting him get away with it, but it's pretty despicable that he'd have tried to in the first place.

99.5% of the time, the gulf coast is not being struck by a category 4 or 5 hurricane, and 99.5% of the time san francisco is not being shaken to the ground by an earthquake. but when we have the means to provide for 100% of the things that might ruin thousands of lives, which i believe we did in this situation, there's no excuse for cutting corners. some truly ugly errors were made every step of the way here, and no one seems to have any explanations for them.